Uh-Oh

John Hollinger takes a look at the free agent class of 2008 and gives us something to worry about:

By the way, if you're noticing a lot of Spurs on this list, it's because they only have three players under contract after next season -- Parker, Ginobili and (once he extends) Duncan. In other words, the dynasty could potentially add somebody like Brand or Marion midstream. Fans of the 29 other teams just spit up in their mouths reading that.

Conveniently, Brand seems to be recovering his covering "incredibly underrated" status after his performance slipped a little bit last season after his outstanding performance during the previous campaign. I don't belong to any fantasy sports leagues, but normally they have some kind of veto provision to let stuff like this happen, right?

The good news, I guess, is that if Brand played on the Spurs, Tim Duncan would need to admit that he's a center.

Comments

I'll mention again that your blog comment spam filter is now stopping all comments with a single html link in them.

If you think a reduced comment flow from me is a positive thing, consider the current settings a feature, not a bug.

Posted by Petey | June 24, 2007 12:38 PM

Petey, I'm aware of your concerns as are the other relevant people and we're endeavoring to resolve the comment spam issue in a satisfactory way. Unfortunately, the company has some other big IT-intensive projects under way so the amount of time that can be dedicated to getting this fixed is limited. It should be better soon.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | June 24, 2007 12:44 PM

"Petey, I'm aware of your concerns as are the other relevant people and we're endeavoring to resolve the comment spam issue in a satisfactory way."

Cool.

-----

My helpful suggestions:

- Close off comments on post older than a week or two.

- Impose CAPTCHA on comments with links. (This is Ezra's solution.)

Posted by Petey | June 24, 2007 12:51 PM

Top blogger panders to top comment-maker!

Posted by otto | June 24, 2007 12:53 PM

Please do not impose CAPTCHA on comments without links. That really irritates.

Posted by otto | June 24, 2007 12:56 PM

Test?

Posted by Freddie | June 24, 2007 1:00 PM

"Top blogger panders to top comment-maker!"

Two possibilities here:

1) As I've always said, if you want something done right, you've got to complain until someone else goes and does it.

2) Commenters rule. Bloggers drool.

Posted by Petey | June 24, 2007 2:11 PM

And in the Fake Right, Veer Left, and then Shoot 6 for 24 with 5 Turnovers Department, check out the quote of the day over at Political Wire. (Figure out how to operate your browser on your own since I can't link.)

On the other hand, JRE is TD.

Posted by Petey | June 24, 2007 2:19 PM

On the other hand, JRE is TD.

Except that his only career win came against the political equivalent of Serge Zwikker.

Posted by Gabriel | June 24, 2007 2:50 PM

As someone at ESPN said, the Spurs are an argument that good management--in a broad business management sense--may be the best strategy for success. It cuts against the import of the individual--though perhaps Duncan makes this silly--which cuts against the standard fan reading of sports.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 24, 2007 3:00 PM

"Except that his only career win came against the political equivalent of Serge Zwikker."

While I might be missing someone, I'd guess the list of Democratic candidates to defeat sitting Republican Senators in the Confederacy in the last 20 years would be as follows:

1) John Edwards
2) Mark Pryor
2) Jim Webb

And unlike George Allen and Tim Hutchinson, Lauch Faircloth was a scandal free candidate for re-election.

In other words, he's the only Democrat to defeat a scandal free sitting Republican Senator since the days when Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork for the Supreme Court. I'd say that all adds up to a not insignificant win.

Posted by Petey | June 24, 2007 3:13 PM

If your primary concern is building a coalition around the Confederacy.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 24, 2007 3:25 PM

"If your primary concern is building a coalition around the Confederacy."

While I'd certainly like to move Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia firmly into the purple column from the red column, no, my primary concern is not building a coalition around the Confederacy.

My primary concern here is merely pointing out that defeating a scandal-free Republican incumbent Senator in the Confederacy in the last couple of decades is significantly more consequential than defeating Serge Zwikker.

Posted by Petey | June 24, 2007 3:40 PM

I didn't feel compelled to watch a minute of the NBA finals. Who will rid us of these meddlesome Spurs?

The 2001 Lakers' claim to greatest team ever: they swept the Spurs. Even the Laker haters were cheering.

Posted by DM Brick | June 24, 2007 3:46 PM

God, if the Spurs got Brand the rest of the league should just relax for a few years until Duncan breaks down. That interior defense alone would be scary. I might even be able to like them, if they'd get rid of Bowen.

Posted by Antid Oto | June 24, 2007 4:16 PM

The 2001 Lakers' claim to greatest team ever: they swept the Spurs. Even the Laker haters were cheering.

This Laker hater wasn't. Spurs have a long way to go before they become as loathsome as the 2000-2004 Lakers.

Posted by guy | June 24, 2007 4:52 PM

God, if the Spurs got Brand the rest of the league should just relax for a few years until Duncan breaks down.

Has any Dukie been on a championship NBA team?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 24, 2007 5:06 PM

Danny Ferry. With the Spurs.

Posted by Antid Oto | June 24, 2007 5:14 PM

Yet another reason to hate the Spurs.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 24, 2007 5:20 PM

Dick Groat, who was (I think) the first Duke player to get his number retired, won a professional championship in 1960 ... with the Pirates ;)

Posted by Thlayli | June 24, 2007 7:20 PM

This is standard for the Spurs. They are one of the best organizations for looking several years down the road at potential Free Agent classes and setting themselves up to have money available.

I suspect most people here remember the last time Jason Kidd was on the free agent market, and fully free in the sense that he could go anywhere he wanted? During that season it was thought Kidd would end up in SanAn, as Parker was both "underdeveloped" and "erratic". In the off season it was generally thought to be a lock that Kidd would go to SanAn. He visited, and was generally close to signing. At the last minute, Mrs. Kidd decided that she needed to be in one of the large media markets to enhance her career opportunities. And at the time, Jason was not far removed from his Anger Management Issues (a/k/a slapping around the wife) the reached their peak (at the time) in Phoenix. So Mrs. Kidd got her way, though Jason was extremely interested in teaming with Duncan to win a title.

The planning and Cap positioning to be able to offer Jason the "max" was something that Pop had blocked out for years, carefully taking on the right expiring contracts, signing Timmy to flexible deals, and wise picking of complimentary young (a/k/a cheap) players like Manu and Tony.

We should have little doubt that Pop and his core of Cap wizards in the Spurs Front Office are already looking beyond 2008 for the next opportune cap moments for the club. The way contracts and the cap are set up, it's not to difficult to block things out in advance. Contracts expire. Contracts have opt-outs, like Kobe's next year. Rookie contracts have a term, and their expiration forces teams to commit money to the.

A wise organization likely has someone blocking out every team, and every player. In the prior generation of this, one of the best was Jerry West. His most famous moment was planning several years in advance for Shaq's moment with the Magic, and dumping salary in just the right quantity and time to have the Brinks Truck ready for Shaq. The last one move leading into it was trading Vlade for a high school player just draft, clearing up more cap room and the position for Shaq. And getting a good "prospect" as well.

The Spurs are the heir to that. They really are quite exceptional at it.

The other extreme is Zeke with the Knicks. His clueless moves with respect to the Cap are legendary and laughable. Unless you're a Knicks fan. :)

On Brand, his 2007 season fits into the context of the rest of his career, outside of 2006. I don't see a great deal to be concerned about. The deline in scoring statically is from taking fewer shots: 3 less FG and about 1.5 less FT a game. He actually hit a career high in FG% this year, so it's not like his game went off the cliff in dropping 4 PPG this season.

If people are looking for a "reason" for his play being down at times this year, I'd offer two.

The Clips made the playoff last year, going into the second round, going 12 games deep. It was the first trip to the playoffs in Brand's pro career. He then played on Team USA in the World Championships. It was a relatively short off season for him. Different players have responded to shortened off seasons in different ways over the years. Some where down. Other seem to zoom right through it. I seem to recall one season where Stockton's poor form for much of a year was chalked up to a far shorter off season than normal, and Stockton was one of the bigger conditioning freaks in the NBA at the time. Brand's play at times in the year looked "tired", and it was on occassion written about out here. I give it a moderate amount of credibility, even if Brand himself might brush it off.

The other is simply that the Clips remain one of the biggest cluster-F trainwreck franchises in pro sports. Much of sports has what Bill Jamaes use to describe in part as the Plexiglass Principle (teams that improve one season tend to decline the next) and the Law of Competitive Balance (the pull of things toward the mean, in the case of teams towards .500). The Clips are the extreme of that - any "good" is pulled back towards that "suck", for lack of a more technical term. :) The organization tends to pull everyone and everything downward ovetime.

As for the Spurs and Brand, it likely is the best possible spot for him. Perhaps playing for Cleveland might be better, but other than that, I can't think of any. Brand is of that Kevin McHale and James Worthy and Scotty Pipen mode. They are extremely good as the second or third banana on a team, to the point that folks think they're Hall of Famers. On their own, it's possible that any one of them might have had very good careers... who knows.

Having watched Worthy's whole career out here, I can say with 100% certainty that had they switched selection in the draft, Worthy never would have scored the number of points Nique scored in Atlanta... while the Lakers would have won a title or two with Nique. On the other hand, I doubt that the Lakers would have won as many with Nique as they did with Worthy (1985, 1987, 1988) or gotten to as many finals (1983-85, 1987-89, 1991). At some point Nique would have tired of being subordanant to Magic. Worthy, in contrast, was the perfect #3 man (behind Cap and Magic) and then #2 man (behind Magic) for that club.

Despite being the National Player of the Year on one of the most gifted college teams that I've ever seen, and being the "star" on almost every team he's played on, Brand plays "team ball" rather than Me Ball. It's been an interesting thing to watch. I frankly don't think the spot light of 2006 was something that he ate up and wanted more of. I think he was quite happy with going back to being more of a team player this year than a "MVP Candidate".

He likely would fit perfectly with Timmy, Tony and Manu in that regards. I have a feeling that within two years we'll see that Jazz have their Shaq-Kobe style war for control of "whose team it is" between that other former Dookie Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams. In contrast, I think at this point Brand would love to move from the clusterific nature of the Clips to a more winning setting like the Spurs, and be comfortable in letting Timmy and whoever is the flavor of the month between Tony and Manu take the attention.

And yes, the Spurs will be extremely hard to beat if that happens. We think that Brand is "old" because this was his 8th season. We forget that he left Duke after his soph season there, and stepped in immediately to being a quality player in the pros. He turned 28 in March.

I'd like to see it happen. Brand is a reasonably good guy in the NBA. The Spurs run one of the best organizations in sports. It's a good fit.

The other good fit would becoming Lebron's #2. I'm not sold that the Cavs Front Office are sharp enough to prepare several years down the road like the Spurs. I also believe that after the sweep in the Finals that there will be pressure, both internal and external, to "get help now" to put the team over the top. That would mean adding cap now, and leaving the 2008 off season cap less flexible.

Sorry for the long, rambling comment. I admire the Spurs front office, and have watched Brand since his freshman year with the Blue Devils. This hit two subjects that get me going. :)

John

Posted by jdw | June 24, 2007 10:48 PM